Day 14: My Love Hate Relationship With Facebook

November 14, 2014

Facebook is so amusing to me for a lot of reasons. For example, it amuses me when people post status updates where someone announces that they are “cleaning up” their friends list. One of my friends did it in rounds. With every “cut” she announced that she had cut more people and if we her (Facebook) friends wanted to stay friends, to leave a comment, and she would not cut those people.

Another friend announced that she was deactivating her Facebook, and that if anyone wished to stay in touch with her, to message her or comment that they wanted to keep in touch in some other way.

Obviously the issue with that is that what if you have friends who aren’t on Facebook 24/7, and they miss the post? Do those people get cut? Or do those people just end up losing touch with you, because you think they don’t want to keep in touch?

I’ve had friends who have deactivated their profile because they couldn’t stand all the good news that people were sharing. (Oh My Gosh! People are too HAPPY!) Jealous? Probably. I’ve also known people who have unfriended/unfollowed people who either posted too much happy stuff or too much unhappy stuff. Because, you know, people don’t really want to know the truth.

There also seems to be some sort of unspoken “rule” about what is acceptable to post/not post on Facebook. As far as I know there aren’t any rules restricting content; except if it is derogatory or offensive in some way.

Stuff like this is usually okay:

Stuff like the fact that you are depressed, not feeling well, or in a bad mood seem to be things that turn people off from Facebook. I’ve had conversations with people about this. They’ve told me that they stopped “following” a friend because they were being too negative.

I’ve also heard people say that they unfriended someone who hardly ever logged into Facebook, or hardly ever posted status updates, or hardly ever comments on anything. So not only do you have to log in to stay friends with someone, but you have to be positive too! And you have to comment even when you have nothing to add to the discussion.

The personal stuff gets kind of tricky. Like, one time I re-posted something I had read about how sometimes it can be very lonely as a parent of a child with Autism. This was my being truthful, and I can assure you is a common feeling for many special needs parents. When I posted it, I wasn’t looking for sympathy or pity or for even to have anyone comment on it. I just wanted to share it. A few minutes after I posted it, someone unfriended me. It didn’t take long to figure out who. The funny thing about it is that right before that, I posted a picture of an A&W restaurant and the person who unfriended me liked that.

I’ve always assumed that Facebook’s purpose was supposed to be to be able to share our lives with the people we have “friended,”to stay in touch with those people, and to let those people know what’s going on in our lives. That should mean that we should be able to share whatever we want (to an extent. I mean, I don’t really want to know if you are in the bathroom or off to go make a baby or kneeling over the toilet puking, or some of that stuff that screams TMI). We should be able to post what’s on our minds, good or bad. Or nothing at all. After all, that’s supposed to be the nature of friendship, right?

As for the friend who unfriended me after the autism post; well, she did me a favor.